Pildes discusses upcoming Supreme Court cases in New York Times

Pildes discusses upcoming Supreme Court cases in New York Times

In an October 5 New York Times article by national legal correspondent Adam Liptak, Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, weighed in on upcoming Supreme Court cases concerning government intervention in the economy, an issue that will permeate the Court’s 2009-10 term.

Pildes predicted that the term will indicate “how much the worst economic crisis since the Depression is going to shape the court’s general stance toward markets and economic regulation.” Singling out a case involving the constitutionality of a regulatory board created in response to the Enron scandal, and another examining the role of the courts in determining the pay of mutual fund advisers, Pildes said the Court’s opinions in those two cases would show whether it is “more receptive to regulatory constraints on the market” after the onset of the global financial crisis last year.

Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a case in which Pildes submitted a brief in support of the respondent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is also on the Supreme Court’s docket. Of the case, which involves the question of whether a lack of presidential oversight of independent agencies violates separation of powers, Pildes said that the Supreme Court’s opinion could determine “how much flexibility Congress will have to design new administrative structures to avoid future financial crises.”

In the 2008-09 Supreme Court term, Pildes’s 2006 Congressional testimony about the reauthorization of a key section of the Voting Rights Act was quoted in the major case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. In another voting rights case, Bartlett v. Strickland, Pildes’s scholarship was cited at least 10 times.

On November 16, Pildes will deliver the keynote lecture at the Thomas M. Jorde Symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The symposium is co-sponsored by Berkeley and the NYU School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.